The Girls in the Garden: A Novel

Ten months after the events of the novel, Adele takes her daughters to the Tate Museum. Along the Thames, they run into Clare. Clare apologizes that they never said goodbye because Grace didn’t want to come back to the apartment. They now live about a mile away, in a place where there isn’t a communal park, and they have more privacy. Clare says Grace never remembered who drugged her and pleaded with her parents to drop the case. Eventually, they did, in order to respect her wishes, despite their own wishes of wanting someone to blame. Grace and Dylan are still dating. Gordon returned to his wife in Africa.

Adele had been worried that they would catch Tyler because Adele discovered that Tyler used Leo’s computer to Google how to fill a needle and threw out the packaging from a needle in Fern’s trash can. Also, Adele worried that her daughters had been involved but blamed her own parenting choices and hid the evidence. Tyler catches up to the group, and Adele tells Clare that they gave Gordon’s room to Tyler after Cecelia’s negligence increased. Adele feels responsible for Tyler as well.

Clare says she couldn’t make other people’s problems part of her life, like Adele and the others in Virginia Park.